Kublacon
2010 (May 28-31 in Burlingame, CA) improved on 2009's Shadowfist attendance
and hosted several tournaments. The winners were announced by Michael Stadermann
in the Shadowfist Forum on Yahoogroups on 31 May 2010. Read the original in
the archive
if you're a member.

Originally posted
to the Shadowfist Forum on Yahoogroups on 29 May 2010 by Pete Bratach. Republished
with permission. If you're a member of the group, you can read the original
in the archive.

Hey everyone,

Last night we had
a better than expected turnout for the New Heroes tournament to kick off this
year's Kubla Con. OK, that number was only 6 (Paul Gerardi, Jamie Lewandowski,
Alfonso Lopez, Earl Miles, Michael Stadermann and me), but we went into it thinking
there would be just four of us, so 50% better than expected is pretty good in
today's market.

We did two rounds
and a final. Michael has the actual results, but I'll give a quick recap.

The first round
saw Jamie (Arc/Asc), Alfonso (Asc) and Michael (Hand) at table 1, and Earl (Lotus),
Paul (Jam) and me (Hand) at table 2. Jamie won their round in minutes, while
our game nearly went to time. We instituted an attrition rule where at the start
of each turn after an hour of play, every card in play took a point of damage
that couldn't be reduced or redirected. Earl's Lotus deck managed a well timed
Infernal Army to march in and take my last site off the board. The other table
managed two more full games in the meantime.

Round 2 was Jamie,
Alfonso and Earl at table 1, while Michael, Paul and I played at table 2. This
time, Alfonso won quickly, while our game again almost went to time, but I managed
to squeeze past Michael for the win.

Final round was
Jamie, Alfonso, Earl and me. Alfonso's deck amassed a lot of power quickly.
Two Shadowy Mentors on Jamie's Agent Tanaka and my Shang Bojing and the game
was over. So Alfonso is our New Hero.

Tonight at 6 is
our Whirpool of Blood draft, and tomorrow (Sunday) morning at 11:30 is our Final
Brawl, which is also the California state championship. If you're in the area
and in the mood, come on out and play!

Originally posted
to the Shadowfist Forum on Yahoogroups on 31 May 2008 by Michael Stadermann.
Republished with permission. If you're a member of the group, you can read the
original in the archive.

Thanks again to
Pete for running most of the tournaments, and to everybody who came out to play!

We had an OK turnout
of 10 players that grouped into 6-7 people per event.

Throughout the
weekend, we were using a new set of timeout rules which I'll describe later
in more detail, but it basically involved damaging cards every turn to clear
out the board and force the issue.

Friday was New
Heroes, which Pete already described in good detail. Three people brought six
decks, just enough for every player who showed. I had brought an Ascended deck
and a Hand deck. I lent the Asc deck to Alfonso. Both decks worked pretty well...
unfortunately, the Hand deck only worked well in games played between rounds,
and never when it mattered. In general, I think New Heroes was well received.
It was great to play with completely different sets of cards and new deck construction
considerations. It might get stale if we played it every week, but given our
current play frequency, I think we'll do this again next year.

Saturday was the
Whirlpool, this time with seven players. I got a Cloaca, an Evil Twin and an
Underworld Coronation, which formed a solid core for my deck and let me win
the first two games. In the final against Jeremy Dale and Paul Gerardi, I was
getting ready to wreak havoc again with Cloaca, but then got stopped by Paul's
Price of Progress (Sewer Demons aren't very progressive, I've been told), and
thus could replenish my power. Instead, Cloaca got visited by Mr. Paine twice
in Paul's turn, and I never recovered from that. A bone-headed play of Underworld
Coronation saw to it that Jeremy wouldn't get anywhere, either, and so Paul
won handily.

Finally, we had
the Final Brawl and State Championship on Sunday. Six people came to compete
for the title, and Pete ruled that we would play until someone won twice. Since
he grouped the winners in the second round, it was likely that the tournament
would be over quickly. My first game against Jamie and Robert saw a steady stream
of weenies pouring onto the table, and after 200 Guys and Habbakuk hit the table,
every one of Jamie's 7 Masters netted me a return of 12+ Fighting. Add to that
the Rent-a-Bat service that Jamie was running, and the game was over pretty
fast. In the second game, it was Robert again and Earl. Robert and Earl were
playing very similar deck, with lots of Underworld Trackers and Hopping Vampires.
Robert's Vampires would typically kill something in their turn, returning a
Vampire, then returning all of Earl's Trackers, which in turn brought back Robert's
tracker. 200 Guys didn't work so well in this game: I would max out around 15
Fighting per use, but bump up the table Fighting by about 20. Still, through
Earl's goodwill and Robert's hydrophobic Trackers, I managed to get up to four
Sites before time ran out. At this point, every card would get damage at the
start of every turn, which wouldn't bother Earl or Robert, but pretty much end
my game. In a last ditch attempt, I mentored one of Robert's Trackers that had
been boosted to ~10 Fighting with Twelve Thousand Skulls, and attacked with
it, two Wisdoms, an Unspoken Name and a Heli Squad. There were 7 interceptors
left, and I figured that between two Moonlit Raids and a Killdeer I should be
able to squeeze through the necessary 4 points to win. Then Earl Misted the
Tracker, changing the ratio to 4:8, and I thought I was hosed... until Robert
decided to block with only his big Tracker to take out my Name, thinking Earl
pretty much had me stopped. Two Raids and a Killdeer later, 6 points of damage
hit the Site, giving me the win and a fancy plaque!

Other than Fist,
I was happy to finally get a chance to play Chaos in the Old World, as well
as Race for the Galaxy, Dominion and No Thanks!

All in all, Kublacon
was a blast, and I'm looking forward to next year.

*** Kublacon 2010
Overtime Rules

Here are the overtime
rules we used this year, along with a short critique:

The game runs for
60-75 mins (as chosen by the TO). After the time is reached, one point of damage
that cannot be reduced, redirected, or responded to is inflicted on every card
at the start of each player's turn. After every full round of damage, the victory
conditions are reduced by one (you still have to take the last site to win).
There is no time limit on the game beyond this, but the games typically end
within 15 mins after damage starts.

We found that this
time-out rule worked pretty well for constructed play: overtime is usually caused
by an overpopulated board, and the damage clears everything out and creates
a use-it-or-lose-it environment with lots of frenzied attacking, quite the opposite
of what normal time out rules do.

The rule had the
opposite effect in the Whirlpool, however. Here, one of the games went into
overtime because no one had anything, and that just got worse as the damage
rained down.

I think I will
continue using this rule in upcoming constructed tournaments that I run. There
is still some randomness involved as the starting time of the damage can make
a big difference for the board state by the time your turn comes around, and
some cards are improved (such as Infernal Army and Exiled Monk), but overall,
there is no hosage in tournament points because of timeout and I find the end
result generally more satisfying.

For Whirlpools,
we will probably try Earl's (?, wasn't there to see who to credit with the idea)
approach next time: when time is called, a permanent, uncancelable Hungry is
in effect for all players until the end of the game. We'll see how that works.